The 14th annual Fantastic Fest unveiled the first wave of programming for their genre-driven film festival — and it is filled with thrills, chills, and in some cases, a large bloody body count. The fest runs Sept. 20-27 in Austin.

The festival pulls from all over the globe to bring audiences the best in horror, sci-fi, cultish, and bizarre when it comes to film. Right out of the gate, the first wave of films impresses with the J.J. Abrams-produced World War II horror thriller Overlord. Directed by Julius Avery and starring Jovan Adepo, the film will make its World Premiere at Fantastic Fest. Avery and Adepo will be in attendance along with castmembers Wyatt Russell, Pilou Asbaek, John Magaro and Mathilde Ollivier in attendance.

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The Raid director will bring his folk horror pic Apostlestarring Dan Stevens will also screen at the festival. The film follows a mysterious man who infiltrates a cult headed by Michael Sheen to rescue his sister. Timo Tjahjanto will bring his action thriller The Night Comes For Us where action stars Joe Taslim and Iko Uwais will go toe-to-toe in a pic that will guarantee bone-breaking action and a large body count.

“Ladyworld”Fantastic Fest

The festival will also put the spotlight on the often overlooked female genre filmmakers. Ukranian director Marysia Nikitiu will bring her romantic visual mashup of genres with When The Trees Fall and Spain’s Sonia Escolano brings tension to religion, faith and belief in House of Sweat and Tears. Isabella Eklof will travel from Denmark to Austin with her Sundance hit Holiday and Fantastic Fest alumna Amanda Kramer will bring her post-apocalyptic teenage thriller Ladyworld to the fold.

Other highlights from the first wave of programming out of Fantastic Fest include Quentin Dupieux’s Keep an Eye Out, Alejandro Fadel’s cerebral Cannes shocker Murder Me, Monster as well as South Korean films from the ’70s Korean Quota Quickies era, where filmmakers flourished amidst stifling

“Maniac”Fantastic Fest

ideological censorship thanks to a quota system which required a strict number of local productions be made for each of the foreign films imported.

The AGFA (the American Genre Film Archive) will also return to Fantastic Fest restoring cult classics including Blood Lake, I Was a Teenage Serial Killer, and Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore. The fest will also include the World Premiere of a restored version of the slasher pic Maniac with director William Lusting in attendance!

Read the rest of the first wave film lineup below.

APOSTLEUnited Kingdom, 2018
World Premiere, 129 min
Director – Gareth Evans
The year is 1905. Thomas Richardson travels to a remote island to rescue his sister after she’s kidnapped by a mysterious religious cult demanding a ransom for her safe return. It soon becomes clear that the cult will regret the day it baited this man, as he digs deeper and deeper into the secrets and lies upon which the commune is built.

BURNINGSouth Korea, 2018
Texas Premiere, 148 min
Director – Lee Chang-dong
Lee Chang-dong’s latest triumph weighs the delicate balance between creation and destruction as a writer runs into an old classmate who gets him caught up in a mystery bigger than both of them.

CAMUSA, 2018
US Premiere, 94 min
Director – Daniel Goldhaber
In Attendance – Writer/Producer Isa Mazzei
Alice is a camgirl with principles. She doesn’t do public shows, she doesn’t tell her fans she loves them, and she doesn’t fake her orgasms. But when a mysterious lookalike takes over her channel, the rules no longer apply.

DOGFrance, 2017
US Premiere, 87 min
Director – Samuel Benchetrit
A dark fable about loneliness, perfectly illustrated by Jacques Blanchot’s loss of humanity and slow transformation into a dog. Director Samuel Benchetrit shares a subtle commentary on our current world, and its social, interpersonal, and political issues.

AN EVENING WITH BEVERLY LUFF LINNUSA, 2018
Texas Premiere, 108 min
Director – Jim Hosking
Fantastic Fest alumni director Jim Hosking (THE GREASY STRANGLER; RENEGADES) is back with a second feature as absurd, crazy, and funny as his first. Follow Lulu Danger’s very own revolution in a Lynch-meets-Waters run-down version of America.

THE GUILTYDenmark, 2018
Austin Premiere, 85 min
Director – Gustav Möller
A horrific crime; an emergency responder struggling to stay off the edge; a kidnapping victim calling in for help. This is all we’re going to tell you about first-time feature filmmaker Gustav Möller’s unmissable and gripping debut thriller.

HOUSE OF SWEAT AND TEARSSpain, 2018
World Premiere, 104 min
Director – Sonia Escolano
In Attendance – Director Sonia Escolano
“She,” the leader of a violent cult, rules her flock with an iron fist to ensure they never stray from the path. But a series of events and a mysterious outsider threaten the pattern of their reality in this electrifying exploration of faith and belief.

KEEP AN EYE OUTFrance, 2018
North American Premiere, 73 min
Director – Quentin Dupieux
An absurd all-night interrogation set in a camp ‘70s police station, Quentin Dupieux’s latest opus, KEEP AN EYE OUT, is a celebration of his own brand of quirky, offbeat humor, performed by France’s most refreshing comedic talents.

LAIKACzech Republic, 2017
Regional Premiere, 88 min
Director – Aurel Klimt
In Attendance – Director Aurel Klimt
This is the story of Laïka the space dog who, unlike in real life, did not die aboard Sputnik 2 in 1957. In this bizarre and charming stop-motion musical, Laïka crashes on a peculiar planet where she meets new friends.

LUZGermany, 2018
US Premiere, 70 min
Director – Tilman Singer
In Attendance – Director Tilman Singer
Luz enters a police station at night to report an assault. As the interrogation progresses, it becomes clear a demonic entity wants to possess her in this audacious, psychotropic horror film shot on 16mm.

THE NIGHT COMES FOR USIndonesia, 2018
World Premiere, 121 min
Director – Timo Tjahjanto
A former triad enforcer must protect a young girl while trying to escape his former gang, setting off a violent battle on the streets of Jakarta.

THE NIGHT SHIFTERBrazil, 2018
US Premiere, 110 min
Director – Dennison Ramalho
An attendant at a busy morgue who can also converse with the dead puts his loved ones in peril using his forbidden knowledge for vengeance in Dennison Ramalho’s (NINJAS; ABCS OF DEATH 2) twisted and gleefully icky feature debut.

ONE CUT OF THE DEADJapan, 2018
Texas Premiere, 96 min
Director – Shinichiro Ueda
A filmmaker sets out to shoot a zombie film in an abandoned factory, but something is lurking on the outside. Is it a zombie apocalypse or just another shoot gone wrong?

OPEN 24 HOURSUSA, Serbia, 2018
North American Premiere, 100 min
Director – Padraig Reynolds
In Attendance – Director Padraig Reynolds
A young woman who had previously set her serial killer boyfriend on fire is now seeking normalcy by getting a job working the overnight shift at a 24-hour convenience store, where things are most definitely not going to be normal.

OVERLORDUSA, 2018
World Premiere, TBD min
Director – Julius Avery
In Attendance – Director Julius Avery and cast including Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, Pilou Asbaek, John Magaro, and Mathilde Ollivier
In the upcoming WWII horror-thriller OVERLORD, a group of American paratroopers drop into Nazi-occupied France on the eve of D-Day. As they struggle to carry out their seemingly impossible mission, they discover a secret Nazi lab carrying out terrifying and bizarre supernatural experiments.

QUIT YOUR LIFESouth Korea, 1971
North American Premiere, 82 min
Director – Park Nou-sik
Presented in English for the first time, actor-director Park Nou-sik balances the scales of justice as he stalks around Korea with his noose of judgment in the relentless revenge drama QUIT YOUR LIFE.

SCHOOL’S OUTFrance, 2018
North American Premiere, 103 min
Director – Sébastien Marnier
In this dread-soaked cerebral thriller, a handsome young substitute teacher gets in over his head when taking on a class of gifted students after their former teacher’s dramatic in-class suicide.

TERRIFIEDArgentina, 2017
US Premiere, 87 min
Director – Demián Rugna
In Attendance – Director Demián Rugna
Strange things are going on in a Buenos Aires neighborhood. Demián Rugna’s constantly surprising and truly spine-chilling horror film has one goal: to scare the shit out of everyone.

THE UNTHINKABLESweden, 2018
World Premiere, 129 min
Director – Crazy Pictures
Something unthinkable is happening in Sweden. It starts with a few isolated incidents but suddenly, it’s all over the country. There are some who were prepared and others who weren’t. Ready or not, things will go out with a bang!

VIOLENCE VOYAGERJapan, 2018
Regional Premiere, 83 min
Director – Ujicha
En route to visit a friend in another village, two kids go looking for a fabled shortcut through the mountain. Instead, they stumble upon an amusement park called Violence Voyager, and that’s when everything goes to shit.

WHEN THE TREES FALLUkraine, Poland, Macedonia, 2018
North American Premiere, 88 min
Director – Marysia Nikitiuk
In Attendance – Director Marysia Nikitiuk
Scar and Larysa are desperately in love and suffocating under the tradition and archaic demands of their Ukrainian village. When the frustrations of each finally detonate, their world and the lives of those surrounding them are tragically shattered.

THE WOLF HOUSEChile, 2018
North American Premiere, 73 min
Directors – Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña
In Attendance – Director Cristóbal León
An animated tale, supposedly restored from the archives of a German colony by the Chilean government, THE WOLF HOUSE is the unsettling story of Maria, punished with a hundred nights alone in a cabin in the woods.